Crytek: Crysis 2 editor this summer, CryEngine SDK in August

Cevat Yerli, CEO & President of Crytek, has penned an open letter titled "Be Free... Be Creative... Be the Developer" in which he outlines his company's plans for the modding community. This summer, Crytek will release the Crysis 2 Editor for those who want to create content for Crysis 2. In August 2011, Crytek will launch its free CryEngine SDK for all of those who want to create new content with CryEngine 3.

Crytek will support two types of projects. If you want to create free mods, Crytek will let you do so free of charge. If you want to commercialize your game, Crytek will also help support that.

The Crysis 2 Editor will allow modders to build maps, items, and custom content for the game. The company also plans to share all its documentation written by the developers and launch an improved crymod.com website for the community.

The CryEngine SDK meanwhile will include everything needed to create a complete game from the ground up. This will give modders access to the latest version of CryEngine 3 - the same one Crytek uses internally, the same engine it gives to its licensees, the same engine that powers Crysis 2. This includes C++ code access, Crytek's content exporters (including the company's LiveCreate real-time pipeline), shader code, game sample code from Crysis 2, script samples, new improved Flowgraph, and asset examples.

Whether you are a game developer, a game modder, or just a gamer, you should be excited with what Crytek has announced. Here is the open letter in full:

Hello to all of you.

Here at Crytek we value our community, and we love what you do with our engine. In recent times our focus has been heavily on the development of Crysis 2, however our modding community has been, and remains, very important to us.

So, I wanted to tell you about our plans for supporting you in the future with some really exciting news, which I want to share with you now. Modding with the most powerful game engine is coming back!

We want to see what you guys can do with CryENGINE 3 and we hope we'll be as amazed with the things you create as we have been over the past few years. This time around, we're going to do things in a different way - offering you the right tools to achieve your vision.

First of all, we will be launching an Editor for Crysis 2 early in summer. This will allow you to build new maps, items and more custom content for Crysis 2. For teams looking for even more creative freedom, we have another option: The free CRYENGINE SDK.

Be Free
In August 2011 we will be launching a free CryENGINE SDK. If you want to use it for fun, like all our previous MOD SDKs it will be completely free of charge, to anyone who wants to play with it! You just register, download the SDK with a personalized license key and you're good to go!

Be Creative
We'll be giving you access to the latest, greatest version of CryENGINE 3 - the same engine we use internally, the same engine we give to our licensees, the same engine that powers Crysis 2.

This will be a complete version of our engine, including C++ code access, our content exporters (including our LiveCreate real-time pipeline), shader code, game sample code from Crysis 2, script samples, new improved Flowgraph and a whole host of great asset examples, which will allow teams to build complete games from scratch for PC.

Be The Developer
With all this power in your hands - we know you're going to do some amazing things with the engine, so we're working out how best to support you.

We'll also be sharing our documentation with you, which is written by the developers of the engine, and we'll be giving you a new and improved crymod.com. We'll update the Free CryENGINE SDK regularly, to make sure you have access to all the advances we make to CryENGINE 3.

If you want to use it to make a game to launch commercially, we'd like to help you with that. If you want to take your product down a traditional commercial route, we will offer an innovative low cost licensing model if you want to release your game digitally.

If you're looking to use CryENGINE for non-gaming purposes, we'll have a per-seat business model for the engine - please enquire at mycryengine.com for further details.

So to go over the details again:

Our next release will be the Crysis 2 Editor, this is for those of you who want to create content for Crysis 2. In August 2011, we will launch our Free CryENGINE SDK for all of you who want to create totally new content on CryENGINE 3. If you just want to make fun, free projects, you can do that free of charge. If you want to try and commercialise your game, we'll be here to help you with that.

I truly value the contribution you have all made to our company and I hope we can continue giving back to you in future.